WDLXTV-Live is an unofficial homebrew firmware for the Western Digital WD TV Live. It enables a wide range of extra functionality which is missing from the official firmware, such as bittorrent, webserver, NZB, SSH, FTP, etc. I’ve done my best to make everything as easily configurable as possible, but it does require a little bit of work on your own. All of the settings are located in S00custom-options, which is included in the zipfile of every release. Open it in a text editor and peruse your options. If you need help there is a forum link at the bottom of the page. If you are a power user then you’ll be able to harness your Linux skills and fly off into the world of homebrew, wondering why you delayed any longer than you did.

I’ve finally fixed the NTFS issues that people had been having. NTFS is now confirmed working. Theres a few other good additions as well, like being able to mount a remote FTP as a local directory The ntfs-3g driver is included, by popular demand, for power users to test with NTFS drives to determine if its better at handling high speed writes than the stock driver. I won’t provide any information on using it and if you want to try you are on your own. I don’t recommend testing with ntfs-3g unless you know what you’re doing and are prepared for possible unforeseen consequences–which there might not be any, but you are forewarned.

WDLXTV-Live is an unofficial homebrew firmware for the Western Digital WD TV Live. It enables a wide range of extra functionality which is missing from the official firmware, such as bittorrent, webserver, NZB, SSH, FTP, etc. I’ve done my best to make everything as easily configurable as possible, but it does require a little bit of work on your own. All of the settings are located in S00custom-options, which is included in the zipfile of every release. Open it in a text editor and peruse your options. If you need help there is a forum link at the bottom of the page. If you are a power user then you’ll be able to harness your Linux skills and fly off into the world of homebrew, wondering why you delayed any longer than you did.

In this release I’ve included some missing files, trimmed up a bit of space, and most importantly patched the bug that was causing a lot of you trouble getting bittorrent & NZB functionality working. Enjoy

A fairly major bug was pointed out by Marakoss, I have patched the firmware to fix it and add one slight enhancement for windows folk. You are highly recommended to upgrade as 0.3.3 is a bit broken

Heres a nice shiny Christmas present for everyone
I’ve patched the bugs and tested deluge/lighttpd/nzbget–thanks to a catch&release WDTV Live purchase The webserver starts automagic now, torrents work, nzbget works, unrar will do multi part archives, and par2 found its way in.

I’d also like to send a huge thanks out to anyone who has donated. Your support means a tremendous amount and helps keep my motivation up. Cheers!!!

I have been working extremely hard the past couple weeks. The fruits of my labours have been plentiful too. I’ve stabilized the internals and fleshed out the system to make it more complete & correct…which probably means nothing to 99% of you, but still it needed to be done. After that I went around and started beefing up the firmware with everything I can think of that I might want or which might be useful to have. Well that turned out to be an epic journey down the binary rabbit h01e…After much struggle and a few bottles of potion I came out on top and all the cards fell into place:)

So now…

Ever want to run bittorrent on your WD TV Live and manage it through an easy web interface? Check.

Ever Desire a web configuration menu so you don’t have to go to the console ever again to change all the mysterious hidden settings I have peppered everywhere? Almost check, webserver is there and config is under works.

Now I know I say this with every version I produce, but please–please–if you enjoy my produce then consider donating as much (or little) as you see fit. I put in around 200hrs of dev time into this release, and I think it shows.

Earlier this month playdude made an interesting comment on the WDTV Live firmware development page. It intrigued me and I brought up the debian guide on debbootstrap, but never really went into it much further…Until a user on wdtvforum, Bob, went through the process and posted his results. Now Debian on the WDTV Live was back at my attention. I brought up the firefox window that had been sitting alone (yes, still) on an unused desktop awaiting my return. What was the next rational step you wonder? WDTV Live booting right into Debian of course (more…)

Its often requested of me to clearly detail various feature of my firmwares. Well this is the first tip in a series I’ll try and add to occasionally. The first tip deals with a feature that I have just included in WDLXTV-LIVE, which allows you to mount NFS shares under the ‘Network Shares’ category–which means you don’t have to have any local storage connected to view 1080p goodness off your NFS!!

This is a momentous occasion and a great feature that I am happy to finally be able to offer.(more…)

WDLXTV is a souped up unofficial firmware for the Western Digital WDTV. It is based off the 1.03.01 firmware, but with many extra features. Similar to my dvdmod firmware, this is a permanent flash, just like an official upgrade. There is no Linux knowledge required to use WDLXTV.

This is a maintenance release. I had a typo that prevented S00custom-options from working, so patched that. I also messed up on the file name for the persistent video resuming, so check the Changelog (below) for details. If you weren’t affected by either of these bugs, then no real big deal to upgrade.

If you enjoy my work please make a donation. My time is thin and donations help focus me on producing new & better versions. Thanks.

WDLXTV is a souped up unofficial firmware for the Western Digital WDTV. It is based off the 1.03.01 firmware, but with many extra features. Similar to my dvdmod firmware, this is a permanent flash, just like an official upgrade. There is no Linux knowledge required to use WDLXTV.

I’ve finally found the time time make a new WDLXTV release, now based on WD TV firwmare 1.03.01. There have bee a lot of changes since the last published release, mostly background tweaks/bugfixes/enhancements.

If you enjoy my work please make a donation. My time is thin and donations help focus me on producing new & better versions. Thanks.

Since I received my WDTV Live a week ago I’ve been working on getting a full fledged homebrew firmware working on it. Well, it only took me 4 days from UPS box to custom firmware and now the stage is polishing and tweaking of the package. This post is intended as a ‘progress report’ of sorts. I will be updating this page as I create new versions and find new information, so be sure to check back.(more…)

So I got myself a new little toy in the mail today, a shiny new Western Digital WDTV Live. In the following writeup I’ll analyze the internals a bit and dig a little into things for everyones amusement…for the record it took me 2:43 from unbox to broken warranty–aka–Open device. (more…)